President Obama dives into ACA details

President Barack Obama’s got a strategy for Obamacare: make the big sell by talking small.

In a speech on Thursday, Obama got deep into the specifics of the sweeping health care law, from a rule that forces insurers to send rebate checks to some consumers to the price competition in its new health insurance marketplaces— all provisions designed to save Americans money.

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Obama health care remarks

Second-term strategy?

The auditor-in-chief routine lets Obama tout how real people have pocketed savings, while steering clear of the many controversies swirling around the law, including a recent decision to extend a requirement for employers.

While many Democrats say they like the strategy, they wonder if it’s coming soon enough to knock down the latest Republican warnings that the law is falling apart – and with just three months to go until Americans start signing up.

“It’s always like they wait a month too long to say what should have been said a long time ago,” said Democratic strategist Joe Trippi.

Trippi and other Democratic strategists say Obama did what he needed to do — he talked about the ways the health care law is already saving money for people, and how it could save them more money in the near future.

But Trippi conceded there’s probably not much Obama can say to convince young and healthy people to buy health insurance that they’ve never bought before — which is why the law’s individual mandate is so important. That piece is so unpopular, though, that Obama didn’t drop the slightest hint about it.

Health care analysts said it wasn’t surprising that Obama skipped any direct mention of the employer mandate delay — other than a vague references to “glitches” that have to be expected when implementing a complicated law. By glossing over the delay, Obama made it clear that the speech “signals a switch from defense to offense,” said Drew Altman of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

And even if Obama has made those points before, it’s fine with Democrats if Obama just pumps up the volume — because it’s not as if his message has broken through yet, and the Oct. 1 launch date of the new state health insurance marketplaces is fast approaching.

“That’s what’s needed right now — just repetition,” said Democratic strategist Jim Manley, who was a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid when the law was passed.

At times, Obama returned to lofty themes he hasn’t used in years. He compared the law’s implementation struggles with the early opposition to Social Security and Medicare, and declared that health care is “a basic right that everybody should be able to enjoy.”

For the most part, though, Obama talked about the less ambitious part: money in people’s pockets.

He spent much of the time talking about a part of the law that’s obscure and hard to explain, but it’s one of the few benefits people can actually see: the rebate checks people have been getting from insurance companies that don’t spend at least 80 percent of their customers’ premiums on health care, rather than administrative costs.

And Obama painted the rosiest possible picture of the next big round of changes — the new health insurance exchanges where uninsured people will buy coverage, with tax credits to help pay for it if their income is low enough. Democrats always considered these marketplaces the part of the law that was most likely to appeal to Republicans. With competition among different insurers to drive down prices, they figured, what’s not to like?

Republicans didn’t go for it, because they’re opposed to the entire law — so now Obama is trying to sell the public on the idea that the competition will drive premium rates lower. He had two timely selling points: a new report saying premiums in 11 states will be 18 percent lower than expected, and Wednesday’s reports that premiums in the expensive New York market will fall by 50 percent for people who buy health insurance on their own.

”You’re going to see competition in ways that we haven’t seen before. Insurance companies will compete for your business,” Obama said. “In states like California, Oregon, Washington, new competition, new choices, market forces are pushing costs down.”